Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Tea & Read: Enduring Love

Sometimes you have to write a bad review. I don’t like to do it, but honesty wins out.

I was very excited to get a copy of this book. I had moved to a place of reading historicals again and thought this book would provide a good opportunity.

I don’t know what went wrong for me and this book. First, I must say that I know part of the problem is that it was book three in a series. I hadn't read the first two. As soon as I read the first page, I realized it was going to be a struggle. There was no introduction of the main characters except that they were happily in love. I didn’t have any emotional connection with the characters and really didn’t form one.

Second, and I think the deal breaker for me, was the emotional angst. The main character’s internal dialog didn’t succeed in connecting with me. After a while, it started to be annoying. And what she was concerned about was a legitimate issue. It’s just there would be several pages of nothing but her emotional upheavals and no forward progression of plot.

Another issue was that the character didn’t develop in the book. Hannah, the main character, ended the book the same way she began. I don’t know if the goal was to show her struggle with her faith in God, but it didn’t see like that faith was strengthened.

I even tried reading the first two books in the series and I didn’t even make it through the first one.